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Smithing was often regarded to be a tedious and expensive skill to train in Free to play worlds before the release of Artisan's Workshop. Forging items out of single bars, financial inability, or the monotony of smelting led people to neglect it. Players also tend to give up at higher levels, as profitable training methods give too little experience to get quick level-ups. For those who are financially more able there are distinctive power-levelling methods, which this guide will elaborate on here. Also, for a table showing profits versus experience made smithing certain items, see this page.

The most efficient way to train Smithing while making a profit is by mining the ore themselves and using the Superheat Item spell on them instantly. Mining sites that support this form of training include the Varrock east- and west mines, as they are situated relatively close to banks in Varrock. The mine in the Edgeville Dungeon can also be found suitable for doing this as it is host to a variety of rocks required to smelt bronze, iron, steel, silver, mithril and adamant bars, alongside the mining site in the south-west of the Lumbridge Swamp, which hosts rocks required to produce mithril and adamant bars. Selling these bars would result in a profit, while gaining some smithing and Magic experience from the Superheat spell.

The actual forging items on an anvil grants far more experience. Doing this with bars one has made for their own would reduce the profit significantly, but at the same time yield a decent amount of experience. As this could consume a lot of time, some people prefer to buy the required ores and smelt them into bars which they would forge into items. This would result in a little less loss than simply buying bars, while yielding some more Smithing experience. A last alternative would be to make a combination of the above, for example to buy the mithril ore and mine the coal to produce mithril bars.

This guide focuses on how to train smithing in both cheap and quick ways, prior to the smithing aspects of Dungeoneering.

Contents

The Knight's Sword is a free-to-play quest that gives 12,725 Smithing experience upon completion. This reward would elevate a level 1 smith to level 29 immediately. It is strongly recommended that people interested in Smithing do this quest as soon as possible. Even a level 3 can do it with the help of another player as a guard, since they need to be capable of defending from ice warriors and ice giants whilst mining the blurite ore.

Beginning smiths not willing to complete the Knight's Sword can only smelt and smith bronze. They can either mine copper and tin ore, smelt them into bars and eventually forge into items, or buy the ores from the Grand Exchange, smelt them into bars and sell them again.

Mining, Smelting and Smithing.

There are four mines which are best suited to mining copper and tin ore:

Once you are at the mine you will want to mine an equal number of copper ore and tin ore. The best idea is to add the best pickaxe you can use to your toolbelt so you don't have to equip it or put it in your inventory.

Buying, Smelting, Smithing and Selling.

To use this method you have to have a reasonable amount of money (ideally 50,000 or more) to begin with.

First of all, you need to go to the Grand Exchange and buy equal amounts of copper ore and tin ore.

Store these bars in your bank for now. After all of the ores you bought have been processed, forge them into items on the anvils next to the Varrock west bank, or next to the Lumbridge furnace.

Lastly, travel back to the Grand Exchange and sell the equipment.

Buying, Smelting and Selling. (Recommended for profit and experience)

To use this method you have to have a reasonable amount of money (ideally 50,000 or more) to begin with.

First of all, you need to go to the Grand Exchange and buy equal amounts of copper ore and tin ore.

You then need to travel to Al-Kharid or Lumbridge for the smelting stage. You will then walk to the nearby furnace and smelt 14 bronze bars out of 14 copper ore and 14 tin ore.

Lastly, travel back to the Grand Exchange and sell the bars for profit (as well as faster experience at this level).

Due to the high demand for bronze bars from people power-levelling Smithing, one can make a large profit from buying the ore. The only downside to this method is the slow experience rate. However, at this stage it actually works out quicker than if you were to mine the ore, smelt and smith it. Therefore this last option, Buying, Smelting and Selling, may be preferred over the second one, Buying, Smelting, Smithing and Selling.

Making Bronze Tracks (Slow, but free)

Players can go to the Artisan's Workshop and make bronze rail tracks. Information on how to make tracks can be found in-game and on the Artisan's Workshop article. At level one, players can only make bronze rails. As their Smithing levels up, players can make more parts of a track. By level 12, they can make and lay a whole bronze track.

One method for raising Smithing at this point is to smelt iron bars from iron ore. This earns experience faster than bronze as well as more money. However, there is not a 100% success rate for smelting iron. The success rate for iron is 50% when you are level 15, but it increases by 1% every time you level past 15, maxing out at level 45 with 80%. One can also use Superheat for 100% but it uses nature runes which eats into the profits, however it also gains moderate Magic experience.

Making Iron Tracks (Slow but Free)

Players can go to the Artisan's Workshop and make iron rail tracks. Information on how to make tracks can be found in-game and on the Artisan's Workshop article. At level 15, players can only make iron rails. As their Smithing levels up, players can make more parts of a track. By level 35, they can make and lay a whole iron track.

Players can go to the Artisan's Workshop and make burial armour from Grade I iron ingots. Information on how to make burial armour can be found in-game and on the Artisan's Workshop article. Making burial armour from Grade I iron does lose a good bit of money, but it's still much cheaper than other power-levelling methods. Grade I iron does give 40,000/hour experience rate. It's also much cheaper than using higher grade iron or steel ingots, but using those yields faster experience rates.

At level 30 players unlock the ability to smelt steel bars which is a very common method for raising Smithing in free-to-play. The reason behind this is that it is possible to make money faster than most other free-to-play money making methods whilst training Smithing.

Profitable Method

If you want to make a profit from Smithing at this stage players should smelt steel bars. Although it is very slow, and takes hours to level it up, it still grants small amounts of money. To do this the following is needed:

For coal: The Mining Guild (Level 60 mining required to enter). Since the Dungeoneering update, one of the best places is the Dwarven Mine resource dungeon which contains 13 coal spawns and has bank deposit box.

If players were to buy the ore, smelt it into steel bars and sell it back on the Grand Exchange they would make a profit of 172 per bar.

Mithril bars can be smelted at this level, giving 30 experience each. They sell for 1,401 in the Grand Exchange, with the mithril ore and four coal costing 1,109. Roughly 250 bars can be made per hour, for a profit of 73,000.

Using Superheat Item, you make a -66 profit provided you use a fire staff and purchase the nature runes. This also allows for the most efficient use of smelting urns, which cost an additional 403 per urn and fills every 25 bars. This method also lets you smelt around 1000 bars per hour or more depending on how active you are.

Note: For those players who have acquired a coal bag from the Dungeoneering skill, it is recommended to smelt steel bars instead since each inventory can produce 472.5 experience compared to 630 experience from mithril bars but with almost double the amount of profit (~4K per inventory instead of 2K), or mix the two by making 14 steel and 13 mithril (635 experience/inventory).

Most of the time, depending on the price of nature runes, casting Superheat Item to smelt mithril bars is a very reliable method. It makes for a profit of -66 per bar and yields high amounts of experience, around 83,000 per hour (1000 x (30 smithing experience + 53 magic exp) = 83,000), or 89,000 per hour with urns (1000 x ((30 x 120%) + 53) = 89,000) distributed across Magic and Smithing. It does require some starting capital and a Magic level of 43.

Gaining 55 Dungeoneering and 20,000 dungeoneering tokens will allow a player to obtain the scroll of efficiency. This scroll will give a chance to save one bar while smithing bars outside Daemonheim floors. It is especially useful in power levelling which can possibly save 10% of cash needed to train a skill. Since you have a chance of saving one bar per item, it is better to smith a 3-bar item such as platelegs instead of 5-bar items like platebodies if the object is to reduce cost. This is because for a 3-bar item you will stand a chance of saving 1 bar out of 3, a saving of 33%, whereas for 5-bar items you will still only save one bar, but this time out of 5, reducing the possible savings to 20%. Of course, the tradeoff between the speed of 5-bar items and the savings of 3-bar items must be considered. For precise power levelling costs please proceed below.

Power levelling mainly uses metal bars for Smithing, raising a quick experience incurring a maximum loss of cash. Basically, players can select between speed or less cost, even in between these power levelling methods. All the power levelling loss is calculated by buying the bars at market price, smithing them and then selling the products at market price. If the products cannot be sold at GE the loss would be even more, up to 20% up. Casting the High Level Alchemy spell on certain smithed items can further reduce the cost of power smithing, with the time spent alching as the compromise.

Important: Using scroll of efficiency requires 55 Smithing. That means a player cannot have the reduced cost until they obtain the scroll, and a player with lower Smithing still has to suffer from the higher power level cost. In order to boost xp rates, one player can use portable forges which gives +10% bonus xp. It allows to save bars from smithing on the anvil, and also provides extra bars when smelting. As portable forges only lasts 5 minutes, the best place to train to save banking time is the Lumbridge bank chest, located north of the lodestone (the unofficial world for F2P forge hosting is W7). It is also highly recommended to set a bank preset in order to quickly fill your inventory and avoid wasting time which could significantly increase cost per xp, as the use of portable forges is a quite expensive method.

Iron equipment can be smithed. Iron equipment is currently the best way to power level Smithing for players (except for very experienced smiths), for low cost of iron bars and large experience outcome. A list of loss per experience for individual equipment is obsolete since smithed equipment can rarely be sold properly.

The iron platebody can be smithed. The loss using iron platebodies to power level is 4.16 per experience. Having the scroll of efficiency used will reduce the cost to 3.15 coins per experience point.

Since the update of occult floors for Dungeoneering, the bar cost has been slightly changed for the experienced players. Currently the most expensive iron item smithed with 3 bars is iron 2h sword. The loss using iron chainbodies to power level is 11.81 per experience point. Having the scroll of efficiency used will reduce the cost to 10.13 per experience point.

In conclusion, iron chainbodies may sometimes be more cost-effective than the platebodies, but with the price of iron items subject to fluctuation, please update the data if the market has changed.

Iron items are the most efficient way for lower level smiths to power level in F2P worlds.
Using the Western Varrock Bank and the anvil across the road south of it, it takes roughly 35 seconds to convert 25 bars into 5 platebodies for a total of 625 experience. One can gain plenty of experience in minutes by running to the bank and back for iron bars.

If Smithing at the Varrock west bank the experience/hour from iron platebodies can be around 90,000 if enough attention is paid

The Mithril platebody can be smithed. The loss using mithril platebodies to power level is 18.4 coins per experience point. Having scroll of efficiency used will reduce the cost to 17.8 coins per experience point.

If smithing at the Varrock west bank with reasonable attention paid around 130,000 experience/hr can be attained.

The Adamant platebody can be smithed. The loss using adamant platebodies to power level is 8.7 coins per experience point. Adamant platebodies are currently the most efficient way to power level smithing in free worlds. The smithed platebodies may be high alched or sold to the Grand Exchange. Having scroll of efficiency used will reduce the cost to 8.1 coins per experience point.

If smithing at the Varrock west bank with reasonable attention paid around 162,000 experience point/hr can be attained.

Smithing with profit usually results in very slow experience, mainly due to the low experience outcome smelting the bars alone, which is essential for profit making. The best place to smelt bars is Lumbridge as the bank chest and the furnace are really close together. If you want to train smithing at Al Kharid, try using this trick: Rest until run mode is 100. Smelt the bars (run). Run to the furnance and the bank instead of walking, when your run mode is 20 or below rest either when you reach the furnace or the bank. Rest until your run mode is 100 again. Another good place to smelt bars is Falador. You can smelt the bars at the Falador furnace and use the West Falador Bank. If your magic is 43 or above, and you're willing to risk losing some money in the process, you can superheat ores to make bars. You can use this spell at the Grand Exchange and as soon as you're done, you can sell the bars. If you run out of runes, you can buy more. To figure out if you are to lose or gain money with the Superheat Item spell, use this table.

At level 30, Steel bars can be smithed using one Iron ore and two pieces of Coal. Various ways of obtaining the ores are available: mining, buying from GE or a combination of both. Coal is mined much slower than iron, causing many players to buy coal and mine iron ores. Smelting 100 steel bars yields 1750 experience. Buying and selling the materials on the GE currently nets 172.

Currently, smelting other bars is less efficient and doesn't yield a much higher experience compared to steel bars, but if you cannot use that method, iron or mithril aren't bad to make a profit.
Most of the time smelting Steel bars is the best way to make money applying the smithing skill. From time to time, due to shifting Grand Exchange prices, other bars become a better alternative, for example Iron and Mithril bars. Mithril bars currently net 292, adamant bars currently net -626, and rune bars currently net 1,090.

This is a combination method explained here. The lowest requirement is 30 smithing and produces steel bars. More experienced smiths can, at levels 50, 70, and 85, produce mithril, adamant and Rune bar respectively. A magic level of 43 is always required for this method in order to utilise the Superheat Item spell.

Superheating whilst mining coal can increase the number of bars produced before needing to return to the bank. If buying ores from the GE to smelt mithril bars, around 35,000 smithing experience and 88,000 magic experience with a profit of 70-90,000 gp can be gained per hour.

This table is to guide you how to fill the 28 spots in your inventory in the most effective way when smelting bars. It can also be used as a guide whilst mining, but then it assumes the pickaxe is equipped. The column at the left tells you which bars are produced and the column next to it tells you which ores one’s inventory should contain in order to make these bars. Please notice this method is before the coal bag was released.

If using the coal bag, you can carry 81 coal in the space of one spot. nearly doubling the amount of bars you can make a trip(except for bronze and iron)

For a player to train smithing repeatedly, switching between power levelling and profit is essential. While smelting steel bars can yield profit of possibly 80,000 in a few hours, money losing through power levelling is even faster, making this skill nearly impossible to train if not treated properly. It is not advised to directly make equipment using your own mined ores, since mining costs time and bars are difficult to be transported due to their weight. The process should be split up to several parts, picking the most efficient ones, most probably would not match in the training process. For example, training by using iron bars and earning through smelting steel bars are not related at all, if you buy the iron bars, iron ores and coal separately (not using bought iron ores to smelt iron bars).

The table below shows the experience points per hour rates and profit of superheating any metal. It is assumed that a fire staff is used and that all ores, nature runes and bars are sold and bought at the Grand Exchange market price. Remember that prices may always vary.

In order to maximise experience, make sure you withdraw the exact amount of ores needed to maximise the bars you can smelt before you need to withdraw ores again. When using a coal bag, fill your inventory with coal, put the coal into the bag and then withdraw all the ores and the resting coal. When all the ores are in your inventory press the 'esc' button to close the bank quicker and to save time. Once most of the ores are smelted into bars, click to open the bank exactly at the same time the last ore is turned into a bar. If superheating without a coal bag, a quick preset can be made with the appropriate ores to make for even faster banking.

The table below shows the experience points per hour rates and cost/experience points for smithing Burial armour. It is assumed that 370 pieces of armour are smithed per hour. It is also taken into consideration that when not following Suak's instructions and smithing any random piece of armour instead, 25% of the time the armour part smithed will still coincide with the one assigned by Suak, thus giving the player the 10% XP bonus.

The table below shows the XP per hour rates of smithing metal bars into armour or weapons. It's assumed that in order to maximize experience points, The anvils located in the West of Varrock are being used and the bank next to them.

Ideally, gaining experience while making a profit is what players strive to achieve. If this is not possible, then players strive to minimise the loss involved. Therefore, some calculation is necessary to determine exactly how much money is gained or lost per experience gained, and to minimise the loss or maximize the profit.

For a given bar, the price of smelting the bar can be calculated easily by adding the prices of the individual ores (optionally added to that is the price of the nature rune if Superheat Item is used.) The profit then is simply the price of the bar minus the cost of the materials. If the profit is positive, money is gained; if it’s negative, money is lost. If this value is p, then the profit or loss per experience is p/x where x is the experience gained by smelting a single bar.

For any given item, let n be the number of bars required to make that item. If k is the cost of one bar and x is the price of the item made, then the profit is simply x – nk. If the profit is positive, money is gained; if it is negative, money is lost. If this value is p, then the profit or loss per experience is p/e where e is the experience gained by smithing a single bar.

For a given item, let a be the number of bars required to make that item. If b is the cost of the ores required to make one bar, and c is the price of the item made, then the profit is simply c-ab. If the profit is positive, money is gained; if it is negative, money is lost. If this value is p, then the profit or loss per experience is p/(e+f) where e is the experience gained by smithing a single item and f is the experience gained by smelting a single bar.

With the introduction of Dungeoneering, a new and most importantly free way to train Smithing has opened up. Though the process is more time consuming than most other methods of training Smithing, the gold piece free nature of this training is ideal for players who are low on money or simply wish not to spend money on ores or mining.

The way to train Smithing in Daemonheim is to use ores that are collected from rocks that may spawn inside the dungeon or from buying off the Smuggler and using them on a furnace. Collecting from rocks doesn't cost any gold pieces in the dungeon except for the initial pickaxe cost, unless it was made, but the rocks that are found in the dungeon have limited resources. After the ores have been used on the furnace you will receive bars which can be used on anvils with a hammer, just like outside Daemonheim, in all manner of items depending on the complexity level.

The most cost-effective way to train smithing in Daemonheim is to stick with Novite (Tier 1) two-hand swords or mauls. The higher tier ores can only give much fewer experience as of heavy costs, and Novite platebodies although gives more experience per smithing interval, platebodies sell for the same price as 2h and mauls, thus reducing the total experience gained in each run considering capital usage.

If you want to train in Daemonheim you should use the hardest complexity so you can make use of the smuggler's shop. The best way to maximise your training in Daemonheim is to sell everything you have after you have completed everything else in the dungeon including the final boss. With the money you make from this you should buy 1 hammer to smith on anvils with and as much novite ore you can fit in your inventory. After use the furnace found in the start room to smelt the ore into bars and then use the anvils attached to the furnace to make as many mauls or 2h swords as you can. After simply sell the weapons and buy new ore to repeat.

With this method you would make 84 experience (exp from a novite maul or 2h sword and 4 ores smelted) for 2100 coins (cost of 4 novite ores from the smuggler) in Daemonheim. The weapons can be sold to smuggler for 420 coins each, or 560 with low alchemy and 840 with high alchemy. This reduces the production cost to 1680 coins for 84 experience for selling weapons. (Experience coin ratio is 1:20)

Note: Smelting in Daemonheim is updated so that it is slightly faster than outside it. Considering speed, it is faster than smelting steel but slower than power-levelling. However, as long as any other players in the team have shared experience on, the smithing experience gained will be divided equally among all the sharing player and the smelter. It is recommended to solo a dungeon to use this method.

The more recently released training method of smithing, is proven a convenient alternative to the process of smelting and smithing metal equipment.

The workshop differs from regular training in three ways: The large amount of time consumption, automated storage and disposal of material, and the raw material associated.

Contrary to popular belief, using the workshop does not require iron or steel bars. Iron ore and Coal are required though, although they can be deposited in note form, saving large amount of banking time. The training process is simple: Withdraw ingots, smith burial armour, deposit and repeat. Generally the workshop is recommended for training at low cost, in which players smith iron miner armour using grade 1 ingots. Ignoring the +10% experience bonus, the training cost is about 4.99 coins per experience point.

Although using better ingots to smith armour will yield significantly better experience, it is generally not recommended as the potential cost would be very large. The experience per hour when using iron ingot i is 40,000, this is pretty good experience as one can afk for 5 minutes before depositing the armour and getting more ingots.